Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference

January 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Genomic Comparisons Between Barley And Rice In Relation To Salt Adaptation And Heritable Salt Tolerance

Harkamal Walia¹ , Clyde Wilson² , Pascal Condamine¹ , Xuan Liu² , Abdelbagi Ismail³ , Linghe Zeng⁴ , Steve Wanamaker¹ , Jayati Mandal¹ , Jin Xu⁵ , Xinping Cui⁵ , Timothy Close¹

¹  Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

²  USDA-ARS, George E. Brown, Jr. Salinity Laboratory, Riverside, CA, USA

³  International Rice Research Institute, The Philippines

⁴  USDA-ARS, Jamie Whitten Delta States Research Center, Stoneville, MS, USA

⁵  Department of Statistics, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

Salinity is one of the major problems reducing productivity in irrigated and rainfed agricultural systems. It is estimated that more than one-third of the irrigated land is presently affected by salinity. Economically important cereals like rice and barley have strikingly different reputations for salinity tolerance. Barley is considered to be highly salt-tolerant among cereals while rice yields are affected by even mildly saline conditions. Useful parallels may exist between rice and barley which can provide insights into the differentiating salt adaptation and tolerance mechanisms between the two crops. As part of the USAID Linkage Program under the IRFGC, we have developed a project to elucidate the commonalities and differences among several, well characterized rice and barley genotypes which differ in salt tolerance using large-scale gene expression analysis. We have focused on early tillering and panicle initiation stages, as these are the most salt-sensitive yield determining stages of rice. The design of the vegetative and reproductive stage salinity stress experiments will be presented. The first phase of the project focused on two indica rice genotypes (Pokkali and IR29), with contrasting salt tolerance which were parents of a mapping population and a recombinant inbred line, FL478 identified for superior salt tolerance at vegetative stage. The poster will highlight the use of a newly developed statistical approach for identifying single feature polymorphisms (SFPs) which used the array expression data to reveal the inheritance of FL478 in the Saltol region.